A spatially explicit backcasting approach for sustainable land-use planning

General backcasting as a decision support and planning method starts from desired future states and simulates developments backwards until reaching the present state. Development pathways that reveal steps to be taken to reach a certain future state, and milestones that serve as interim goals, are created during the process. Backcasting has hitherto only been applied in workshops or as a theoretical framework and no spatially explicit backcasting model has previously been established. This paper presents the development of a spatially explicit backcasting model. The proposed model first creates a future scenario utilizing an agent-based model and then simulates backwards. It is implemented using the programming language Python. The model has been applied to a case study for sustainable land-use planning in Salzburg, Austria. The results of the model run show a successful backcasting of land-use classes from a future state back to the present, in 10 year time steps.     

Responding to a policy mandate to collaborate: structuring collaboration in the collaborative forest landscape restoration program

The Collaborative Forest Landscape Restoration Program (CFLRP) aims to expand the pace and scale of forest restoration on national forests in the United States. The program requires candidate projects to develop landscape-scale forest restoration proposals through a collaborative process and continue to collaborate throughout planning, implementation, and monitoring. Our comparative case analysis of the initial selected projects examines how existing collaborative groups draw on past experience of collaboration and the requirements of a new mandate to shape collaborative structures as they undertake CFLRP work. While mandating collaboration appears contrary to what is often defined as an informal and emergent process, mandates can encourage stakeholder engagement and renew commitment to overcome past conflict. Our findings also suggest that a collaborative mandate can lead to increased attention and scrutiny, prompting adjustments to collaborative process and structure. As such, mandating collaboration creates dynamic tensions between past experience and new requirements for collaborative practice.     

Implementing the European flood risk management plan

In response to the extreme flood events of recent decades, the European Union has released the Floods Directive (2007/60/EC), which requires the creation of flood risk management plans. These plans do not yet exist in practice, as water management agencies have until 2015 to put them into action. This contribution will discuss two questions regarding the European flood risk management plan: First, how is the new instrument integrated into the various member states, particularly with respect to the scenario approach? Second, how prepared are the institutions for the collaborative planning paradigm of the flood risk management plan, particularly with respect to the river basin districts approach? Citing examples from France, Germany, the Netherlands, and Great Britain, this paper offers both a pessimistic and an optimistic perspective on the implementation of the new flood risk management instrument.     

The impact of ISO 14001 on corporate environmental performance: a study of Swedish manufacturing firms

The debate concerning the environmental effectiveness of environmental management systems (EMS) based on ISO 14001 is still open and scholars have called for further studies that can explain the contrasting evidence in previous research. As a response, this study aims to contribute knowledge about the effects of ISO 14001-based EMS by presenting fact-based environmental data. The study focuses on changes in performance over a period of 12 years and includes both firms with an EMS (66 firms) and firms without one (50 firms). Consideration is given to the improvement efforts in the firms before EMS adoption making it possible to neutralize any selection effects where better environmental performance precedes ISO 14001 adoption. Analysis has been carried out using statistical methods for six different environmental areas. No statistically significant differences between certified and non-certified firms concerning the change in the rate of improvement could be found in any of the six areas. However, it can be suspected that EMS adoption has positive effects on energy use and waste production whereas the non-adopting firms seem to perform better concerning air emissions. These mixed results mirrors previous research, which is rather worrying considering the worldwide popularity of EMS based on ISO 14001 in industry.     

Environmental health in the complex city: a co-evolutionary approach

While public health and urban planning were closely linked in the past, today both domains are institutionally separate. In most cases, health intersects with spatial planning processes only through obligatory evaluations, such as environmental impact assessments, or restrictive environmental legislation. This institutionalisation of health criteria in most western countries has difficulty in dealing with recent environmental health challenges, leading to continual distrust and conflict between citizens and the government. This impasse has recently been discussed by academics who acknowledge the complexity of both city and health issues. It seems, however, that the full extent of the issue has not been covered yet, leading to recommendations and frameworks that are useful but fixed and retrospective. This paper moves beyond those fixed frameworks to develop a better understanding of the complexity of the current disconnect and explores ideas for a future planning approach, grounded on new ideas of co-evolutionary and adaptive planning.     

Ecological risk and accessibility analysis to assess the impact of roads under Habitats Directive

We propose a method for the appropriate assessment of adverse effects of roads in compliance with the European Union Habitats Directive. The method incorporates an analysis of ecological risk of edge effects by the proposed roads with the related increase in accessibility. The method was tested on 30 km of planned forest roads inside an 8,000-ha reserve included in two Natura 2000 sites. As a result, the cumulative effect of 19 road segments was judged as not significantly affecting the integrity of the sites, although they made accessible an extra 314 ha. On the basis of the accessibility calculation, 20 ha of land were set aside from forest exploitation as a mandatory mitigation measure. The method objectively determined the cumulative adverse effects, enabled comparison of plan revisions and alternatives and proved to measure direct and indirect significant effects with a realistic effort in terms of field survey and geographic information system processing.     

Coupling of the Water Cycle with Patterns of Urban Growth in the Baltimore Metropolitan Region,United States

Regional municipal water plans typically do not recognize complex coupling patterns or that increased withdrawals in one location can result in changes in water availability in others. We investigated the interaction between urban growth and water availability in the Baltimore metropolitan region where urban growth has occurred beyond the reaches of municipal water systems into areas that rely on wells in low‐productivity Piedmont aquifers. We used the urban growth model SLEUTH and the hydrologic model ParFlow.CLM to evaluate this interaction with urban growth scenarios in 2007 and 2030. We found decreasing groundwater availability outside of the municipal water service area. Within the municipal service area we found zones of increasing storage resulting from increased urban growth, where reduced vegetation cover dominated the effect of urbanization on the hydrologic cycle. We also found areas of decreasing storage, where expanding impervious surfaces played a larger role. Although the magnitude of urban growth and change in water availability for the simulation period were generally small, there was considerable spatial heterogeneity of changes in subsurface storage. This suggests that there are locally concentrated areas of groundwater sensitivity to urban growth where water shortages could occur or where drying up of headwater streams would be more likely. The simulation approach presented here could be used to identify early warning indicators of future risk.     

Applying Statistical Causal Analyses to Agricultural Conservation: A Case Study Examining P Loss Impacts

Estimating the effect of agricultural conservation practices on reducing nutrient loss using observational data can be confounded by factors such as differing crop types and management practices. As we may not have the full knowledge of these confounding factors, conventional statistical meta‐analysis methods can be misleading. We discuss the use of two statistical causal analysis methods for quantifying the effects of water and soil conservation practices in reducing P loss from agricultural fields. With the propensity score method, a subset of data was used to form a treatment group and a control group with similar distributions of confounding factors. With the multilevel modeling method, data were stratified based on important confounding factors, and the conservation practice effect was evaluated for each stratum. Both methods resulted in similar estimates of the conservation practice effect (total P load reduction avg. ~70%). In addition, both methods show evidence of conservation practices reducing the incremental increase in total P export per unit increase in fertilizer application. These results are presented as examples of the types of outcomes provided by statistical causal analyses, not to provide definitive estimates of P loss reduction. The enhanced meta‐analysis methods presented within are applicable for improved assessment of agricultural practices and their effects and can be used for providing realistic parameter values for watershed‐scale modeling.